Gallery 2
Butchery
Ali McCann, Daniel Price, Jensen Tjhung, Pia Murphy, Vivian Cooper Smith and what.
Curated by Vivian Cooper Smith
The body is a contested site. Manipulated and claimed by every system from religious extremism, to advertising to the punishing demands of capitalism. Bodies are distorted and restricted through enforced and internalised adherence to greater powers (religious and secular). These bodies are political and are battlegrounds – sometimes literally.
The battle for ‘hearts and minds’ is at rare extremes with devastating consequences. Individualism and rapacious consumption of ‘product’ overlooks the rise of suicide and depression. An attachment to non-renewable energy ignores the abuses of one government while attacking another. Religions declare themselves peaceful while disowning atrocities committed in their name. Resistance seems futile. Protest is cordoned off, disruption to ‘peace’ not tolerated and unity of vision fragmented. How as artists can we respond? Can we harness the headless, dismembered or flayed body as the symbolic site of the ultimate resistance? No identity – just an aggregate of fragments, constantly shifting and breaking.
